Haven’t I Done Enough?
THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
Micah 6:1-8 • 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 • Matthew 5:1-12
“Haven’t I done enough for you?”
I don’t know about you, but these words are on the tip of my tongue every so often. Sometimes, I’ve exhausted myself at work and at home, and then someone approaches me with a small request that probably they could take care of themselves. Sometimes, I’ve done a lot of behind-the-scenes planning and organizing, but I’ve come up short in a moment of crisis or need. Sometimes, I really have failed to get something done, which then seems to outweigh all the occasions when I came through. Our partnerships, our parent-child relationships, our workplaces, or our communities sometimes push us to this edge. “Haven’t I done enough?,” we sometimes want to say.
If our first reading from the prophet Micah is any indication, sometimes even God has a similar outburst. After reaching his breaking point, God presents a “case” against God’s people. The formal proceedings begin by calling witnesses: the mountains, the hills, the earth’s very foundations. These geological formations listen to the Lord’s opening statement: “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!”
The Lord then recounts all the things he’d done for the people by the 8th century BC—when Micah prophesied. I’ll paraphrase: Just 600 years ago, I delivered you single-handedly from slavery in Egypt. I gave you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam—incredible leaders!—remember them? No? Well then, you should read your Bibles!!
In the book of Numbers, you’ll find that I once emboldened my messenger Balaam to stand up to King Balak of Moab. I even made a donkey talk in the process! It’s a great story. Sadly, Episcopalians 2.5 thousand years from now won’t include that story in their Sunday Bible readings.
If you want something I did for you more recently, remember that a little more than 500 years ago, I led you from Shittim to Gilgal. You know—Shittim and Gilgal!! Do you not have maps of the holy land hanging around? Shittim is on one side of the Jordan and Gilgal is on the other, so what I’m saying here is that not only did I lead you out of Egypt across the Red Sea, but also I led you across the Jordan river, into the land of promise!
And there, the Lord rests his case. If this were a real trial, the Lord’s closing argument could have been, “Haven’t I done enough for you??”
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Like most arguments in personal relationships that dredge up ancient history and depict oneself as the long-suffering victim, the Lord’s opening statement doesn’t go all that well. The response it provokes from humankind, according to the prophet Micah, is something along the lines of, “Okay, so what do you want from me?”
The human wonders what offering could possibly satisfy a God who seems so demanding—a God who seems to expect big shows of gratitude for the handful of “saving acts” he did in ancient times for people long ago. The human asks: Will this God be satisfied with a tender, year-old calf? No? How ‘bout a thousand rams? If not that, how ‘bout TEN thousand rivers of oil? Still not enough? What about . . . my firstborn child? Will THAT make you happy? THEN will you forgive me?
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We might know from our more ordinary relationships that there’s rarely a good outcome in a showdown between “Haven’t I done enough for you??” and “Okay, so what do you want from me—my firstborn??”
But the prophet Micah brilliantly brings in the voice of an unobtrusive third party to suggest, gently, that the human cool it with the exaggeration. The Lord doesn’t want any of those sacrifices. In fact, through many prophets, and consistently over the centuries, the Lord “has told you, O mortal, what” the Lord asks for—that you “do justice,” “love kindness,” and “walk humbly with your God.”
The word translated here as “mortal” is “adam”—or “Adam”—the Hebrew word for “human.” The image of God longing to walk humbly with the “adam” recalls how in the Garden of Eden, God used to take evening strolls, before the first humans hid themselves from him. Perhaps the God of the biblical story wants to return to those simpler times, when God and humans walked and talked easily together.
The word translated here as “kindness” is chesed—a specific word that describes the love God expresses through the covenant. Chesed often is translated as “steadfast love,” to express how the love God shows is sticky, and durable.
So the prophet Micah reveals what even the voice of the Lord, refracted initially through Micah, doesn’t express clearly: The Lord’s outburst of “Haven’t I done enough for you?,” and the Lord’s rehashing of ancient history, gives way to the quiet revelation that what God wants is to experience chesed, covenanted and steadfast love, to walk and talk with each of us as freely as in the honeymoon period of God and humankind in the Garden of Eden. The voice of the Lord at the beginning our reading might sound furious and wounded, but the prophet Micah realizes that what God wants most is to be in relationship with us.
In my own relationships, I’m sometimes pushed to the brink of asking, but I also sometimes hear people in my life saying some form of, “Haven’t I done enough for you?,” or, “What more do you want from me?” Beneath those questions, there usually are deeper questions: “Am I not enough?” “Don’t you remember?” “Don’t you see?” “Can I not make you feel loved?”
When faced with a strained relationship between God and humankind, the prophet Micah helps both parties return to covenant and conversation. Micah helps God explain that he doesn’t ask for ever-greater sacrifices. And perhaps Micah, by starting the conversation, allows God’s people to ask not for reminders of God’s grand gestures in ages past, but for God’s consistent and abiding presence, here and now.
Instead of a relationship forged from issuing mutual demands, our relationship with God might be a simple agreement to walk together. God might not show love in the ways we prefer—like through the powerful, unmistakable signs, or through the philosophical triumphs, that Paul in our second reading says many people seek from God. Instead, God reaches out to us in love through Christ. For Paul, Christ crucified is how God does justice, shows steadfast love, and walks with us. As we learn to accept God’s ways of showing love, we also can grow in trust that what we offer humbly to God will be accepted, and will be enough.
© 2023 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas